Jan 30, 2003

Software Locolization. An overview of what the mermaid do for a living, day in, day out, come rain, come shine, come drizzle, come lightning, come the Merchild trying to knock my door down.

The Hairy Hungarian says I'm fed up with this type of projects and that soon I will be venturing in other areas. But frankly, I don't see it happening.

My mental status bar says: you're acting like an eye doctor who suddenly decides she wants to be a cardiac surgeon.

Let's face it: I'm a specialized mermercenaire. The savants affirm that I rocked as a translator of journalism. Highly commended. I supposed I liked the texts too (although to this date mentions to names such as Larry Rother, Richard Corliss and Diana Jean Schemo provoke a certain malaise). Wait, I think it's safe to say I loved translating this one. But I hated the crushing deadlines and I hated the low pay.

It's truly a dilemma. By now, I know all the software terminology by heart and even backwards. I am pretty confident that I could vroom my way through an online Help even when fast asleep. My output is soaring but my mind is growing number and dumber. And by God I detest those 5 page long instructions sheets.

The predecessors of the Fantanas. I guess today is one of those days in which I will publish any kind of private joke posts, provided they keep me off my software manual translation.

There is big brouhaha in the Portuguese translators list today on the topic of evaluating the reliability of Web searches. See, the thing is the Web is being used periodically as the mother of all dictionaries by translators and there is a lot of garbage coming out in translations as a result of transgooglification. Who pulled the thread? Danilo Nogueira, who after over a year of absence rejoined the list, bringing Lazarus back from the dead with his sharp observations and unparallelled witticisms.

Jan 23, 2003

Live from the WSF. The famously controversial or controversially famous Hairy Eyeball has initiated live coverage from the World Social Forum, taking place en las orillas del Guaíba, in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.

According to the Mermaid's special envoy to this leftist alka-seltzer of ideas, Elvis, Jesus and even Prentiss Riddle are in attendance of the event. However, so far the Hairy Eyeball has been too mesmerized by the Pentium 4 computers in the Press Room to do any serious reporting.

He even posted a Photoshop-ed memento of his girlfriend on the blog today! Imagine how disastrous if the AF, AP and other agencies correspondents started sending provençale-inspired barcaroles, snapshots of their birkenstocks and description of the scrambled eggs they had for breakfast to the international press.

However, we believe that the Hairy Eyeball is an organ with a mission and that much instantaneous and juicy gossip about the World Social Forum will be posted here in the next few days, only to be captured in Google-cache eternity, for all times, Amen.

Colloquialisms used in Business Settings. "Most of us unconsciously use jargon or slang that doesn't mean much to speakers of English (or even American in this case) as a second language. Over the years I have recorded some common phrases used by my countrymen during U.S.-Japanese business meetings that upon upon retrospect, may have been rather puzzling to the Japanese participants."

chiasmus [ky-AZ-mus] (plural -mi), a figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. This may involve a repetition of the same words ("Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure" --Byron) or just a reversed parallel between two corresponding pairs of ideas . . . . The figure is especially common in 18th century English poetry, but is also found in prose of all periods. It is named after the Greek letter chi (x), indicating a "criss-cross" arrangement of terms. Adjective: chiastic.

And there is a whole site dedicated to them under the motto Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you.

Serendipity strike: While doing my morning Web wanderings I chanced upon this chiastic quote from Montaigne:

Parabéns a você. And today's birthday-blog is yours truly, the Enigmatic Mermaid. As the old Brazilian shampoo commercial used to say: vocês lembram da minha voz, ela continua a mesma, mas meus cabelos, quanta diferença! Thanks to my readers for keeping tuned, even when the commercial breaks are long and the commentary too sparse (need I say that I worship Plep?). My readers are such an unbelievably loyal crowd that I've been even getting referrals from Fairvue lately. To this I can only say that you must be out of your minds! Language Hat beats me hands down in the linguablogging department. Prentiss is way cooler and heavily annotated. Pat is more wacky-cranky in his style, and the Hairy Eyeball is a much more efficient keyword manipulator. And of course, the best design award goes to Glosses.

Speaking of design, this is all I could get out of Photoshop in the way of commemorative banner. Enjoy and link!

January 14 marked the first aniversary of the death of Professor Stanley Unwin, who was best known as an inspired mangler of the English language. Here's Stanley's retelling of Goldyloppers and the Three Bearloaders.

There was a cotty; so she went up, all ready with the basket and picked up the butter and all that with a little bit of birch she scrape it off and rub it and down her clothesee. Mum would be cross but... never mind. Clop clop on the door. This little cotty had a jar on the door, so she went in. Nobody there. Three baseload of porry on the tabloid, all slightly steamy huff, and nobody at. She called out: [as though down a cardboard tube] "Anyone home?" Nobody. Folly, folly, and a little hunger was with her, so she falolloped a taste out of the first basel.

You can read transcripts, but you're much better off listening to these clips instead.

Jan 14, 2003

Jan 9, 2003

Online Translators. A lot of people come to this site looking for them. So here's a compilation of some online translation tools, powered by machine translation. None of them are reliable at this point, in fact they are more like gobbledegook generators. So if you're looking for an accurate translator, hire a human translator. There are several translator directories on the Internet, which you can search for free. I recommend ProZ and ForeignWord, but you can also try your luck at the Google Directory or at the Open Directory Project. In addition to the obvious online translators, I tried to include some supporting rarer language combinations.

Jan 8, 2003

A Melhor Batatada do Ano. The year has barely started and we already found the most likely winner of the Enigmatic Mermaid Translation Howler Award. Here's the scenario (which should almost never be calqued as cenário when you translate into Portuguese). An unknown editor calls for help in understanding a sentence from a software manual. She can't figure out the meaning of the verb to prompt, which to me, is a clear indication that she has never even heard of the MS terminology glossaries and probably hasn't opened her pocket Michaelis, if she has one.

SourceIf you are not logged on as a member of the Administrators group, you do not have sufficient permissions to repair the Office installation in this scenario, and you are not prompted for the Office CD.

We turn a blind eye to the faulty grammar (the conditional tense calls for se você não estiver, blah blah), the use of você instead of the neutral usuário (which is debatable), but "você não é solicitado pelo CD do Office" can't be forgiven. The literal meaning of this sentence in the Última Flor do Lácio is "your presence will not be requested by the Office CD". Or maybe the Office CD wants the user to insert himself in the drive? It's also a possibility.

Before there were presentations, there were conversations, which were a little like presentations but used fewer bullet points, and no one had to dim the lights. A woman we can call Sarah Wyndham, a defense-industry consultant living in Alexandria, Virginia, recently began to feel that her two daughters weren't listening when she asked them to clean their bedrooms and do their chores. So, one morning, she sat down at her computer, opened Microsoft's PowerPoint program, and typed:

Family Matters An approach for positive change to the Wyndham family team

Powerpoint links via greg.org. Make sure you drop by In Passing, if only for a passing moment.

Online Library. "Questia is the first online library that provides 24/7 access to the world's largest online collection of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences. You can search each and every word of all of the books and journal articles in the collection. You can read every title cover to cover (Mermaid warning: not so. in many cases you will only be able to read the first page of each chapter, unless you subscribe). Anyone doing research or just interested in topics that touch on the humanities and social sciences will find titles of interest in Questia."

Jan 6, 2003

Siren Song. My ramblings continue to attract interesting people to this blog. Ivana Bentes was here today. Among other things, she is a film critic and researcher and a Glauber Rochascholar. Here is a selection of links with her writings, interviews and miscellaneous goodies.

R.I.P. Lavinia Henderson Cotrim, English translator and interpreter based in São Paulo, Brazil. She leaves one son and one daughter. Mima, as she was affectionately called, was too young to die, too corageous to die. I last saw her about two months ago. It was a chance encounter, away from the conference rooms of São Paulo. G. and I were visiting the waterfalls of Brotas and there she was by Angela's side, wearing a helmet and climbing gear, waiting in line to go down the Cachoeira Cassarova.

When I heard the message on the answering machine last Friday I misheard Denise: "vc sabe da Mima?" instead of "vc soube da Mima?". I thought to myself: "yes I think I know Mima's whereabouts, she is probably at the Chapada dos Guimarães with Angela. Then I reviewed the messages today, and that little verb tense just told me that bad news were on the way.

I feel sad for our Mima with the dry sense of humor and adventure spirit. For our Mima who refused to buy a cell phone in the name of her privacy. I feel sad for the incredible loneliness of the world, and for our blindness in realizing it can engulf our friends too.

Her memorial service will take place on January 08, at Capela do Colégio Américo, São Paulo, Brazil, at 7pm.

Jan 5, 2003

Life is so Unfair. While the Globo Ocular Peludo gets to go to Bahia and drink maracujá caipirinhas I get to go to Bee City and to drink unwanted drops of strawberry juice from the Mermie's sippy-cup. She more or less freaked out when she saw all those beehives and beebuzzing exhibits. But the uterine experience of going inside the giant bee gave her a kick. Speaking of kicks, how about smuggling some Fernando Pires shoes to New York?

Jan 4, 2003

Pasmaceira de Começo de Ano. So the holidays came and went and I haven't been doing much except worrying about neverending bills and dwindling jobs, reading some new blogs, like Jesus me Chicoteia. The lack of work is (let's hope) a seasonal problem. However, I remember with longing the stiffling hot days of other months of January when I was bitching because I was too swamped with work to go to the beach. I guess I could use this time for massive blogging and job hunting, as well as for those errands that never get done due to lack of time and my discouragement every time I read the São Paulo traffic reports. It's so much nicer to stay inside my little shell in Oyster Complex.

Number one in the To be Postponed for an Unconscionable Period of Time is getting my Sworn Translator paperwork in order so I can begin translating school reports, birth certificates, articles of association and other deadly boring documents. So that is what I will be tackling next. I will also be benefiting from increased computer use time, now that the Hairy Hungarian has traveled back to Piracicaba, thrilled for having completed his masters thesis and for having downloaded at least 100 MP3 German rock songs (including 99 Luftballoons, so much for calling me Alte) courtesy of WinMx. I had no such luck in downloading the Goran Bregovic music I am constantly looking for.

And since I wrote more than two lines for a change, with barely any use of the CRTL-C keyboard shortcut, have I wished everyone a Happy 2003? Well, here are my belated voeux of happiness and prosperity neatly tucked in this collection of Ukranian postcards.

Classics Deluxe. Read this interesting post about the Brazilian market of deluxe editions of classic literary works. Then read the comments for some enlightening as to why Brazilian publisher houses are pursuing this marketing trend.